Nunavut scores lowest grade in Canada food report card

"Nunavut lags far behind and requires remedial attention"

Here you can see a graph from the Conference Board of Canada's food report card that shows how Nunavut compares to other jurisdictions with respect to moderate to severe food insecurity.

Many Nunavut residents go hungry, confirms a food report card for Canada that gives the lowest grade possible to Nunavut—a D—for poor performance in making sure its residents get enough food.

Most Canadians consume significantly more food than they need, said the Conference Board of Canada, in its introduction to the recently-released Canada Food Report Card.

But that’s not the case in Nunavut, where moderate to severe food insecurity—or a lack of food—affects more than one in three Nunavut residents and one in two Nunavut Inuit.

The report card says Canada needs to do more to bring the territory up to the level of other Canadian jurisdictions.

“Nunavut lags far behind and requires remedial attention,” says the report card from the independent think-tank on the “D” grade it gave to Nunavut on food insecurity.

The card confirms what Statistics Canada said in February, that majority of Inuit adults in Nunavut—roughly 55 per cent—continue to be hit hard by food insecurity and don’t get enough food.

Nunavut also has the highest amount of Indigenous food insecurity in Canada, said the report card, noting that Inuit food insecurity is increased by changes in the climate and environment.

“The eroding interest in, and increasing costs of, hunting traditional or country food are also factors,” the report card also said.

While the 157-page report did not include Nunavut in many of its provincial and territorial snapshots of industry prosperity, healthy food and diets, food safety, household food security and environmental sustainability, it did note that, among other things, youth and adults in Nunavut don’t get enough fruits and vegetables.